by Blake Pierce
“Bad news, Rookie,” Ripley said. She tapped the skull with her knuckles. “The bones are hollow. This skull isn’t real.”
The officers took Clyde Harmen out of the door and into their squad car. Before he left, Clyde looked back at Ella and laughed.
***
Judging by what they’d seen so far, Clyde Harmen’s house was like a museum for the grotesque.
Clyde was taken back to the precinct to await questioning. Meanwhile, Ella, Ripley, and Harris used the opportunity to scour his home from top to bottom.
“Fake?” Ella asked. “How can you tell?”
“The texture is completely different, and there’s a hollow section where there should be solid bone. It’s nowhere near heavy enough, either. When you’ve seen as many autopsies as I have, you know what a human skull looks like.”
She didn’t try to hide her frustration, but even with this revelation, Ella knew that it didn’t mean Clyde Harmen was innocent. If he had a penchant for this kind of imagery, his capacity for morbid activity might go further still.
“So it’s not the remains of a new victim,” Ella conceded, “but he could still be our unsub, surely? He attacked me with a saw, for God’s sake.”
Ripley pursed her lips together as she fiddled around on the wall for a light switch. “Put it this way, this guy definitely has something to hide. What that is, I’m not sure yet, but chances are this house will tell us.”
She found it. A dim orange glow was cast over the room, and what appeared was like something they’d never seen before. So far, they’d only seen Clyde’s bizarre creations through the lens of darkness, but bathed in light, they took on a new life entirely.
“Well, I’ll be dipped in shit,” said Harris. “What in God’s name is all of this?”
They were in the living room. The first thing Ella’s eyes were drawn to was a squirrel standing on the table beside her, but it was by no means a normal squirrel. Bat wings had been sewn into its back and nails circled around his head like a crown of thorns. Up above her on a shelf was some kind of elongated vermin creature with ten legs, stitched together from the corpses of multiple rats. A giant tarantula sat beside it, but in place of its beady eyes was what looked like a single human eyeball.
“Taxidermy. Like you’ve never seen before,” said Ripley.
Harris turned and spotted the stuffed tarantula. He jumped back in shock. “Jesus wept. Those things make me itch.” He moved away from it. “I can’t believe someone this insane lives in my town, but I have to say, all of this makes a pretty good case for this being our guy.”
Ella picked up the tiny bones she accidentally stepped on before she found Clyde. She held a curved bone which resembled a human rib and took it back to Ripley and Harris.
“What do you make of this?”
Harris took it from her and inspected it. “Alligator bone. Looks like it’s from a baby croc. They wash up on the shore all the time.”
Ella was both relieved and disheartened at the same time, but if this house proved one thing it was that Clyde Harmen was severely disturbed. There was every possibility that experimentation with animal carcasses was a steppingstone to human slaughter. Not to mention he fit the psychological profile to a T.
Ella continued searching the ground floor, finding more and more uncanny constructions in every room she inspected. But it wasn’t until she entered the kitchen that she heard a scuttling sound beneath her feet.
“Guys, get in here,” she called. Ripley and Harris joined her. “Can you hear that?”
It took a few seconds, but there again was the unmistakable sound of something shuffling below them.
“I hear something,” Ripley said. “Basement?”
“Let’s check it. The entrance would be underneath the stairs,” said Harris. They followed his lead to a small alcove in the hallway, but the entrance was barred by a solid metal door. Harris pushed it. “Locked up tight.”
“Odd,” Ripley said. “A steel door in an old house like this?”
“And no door handle to get in?” Ella added.
Ripley pushed on the door to no avail. “This door is brand new. And it’s a fire-exit door. It only opens from the inside out. Whatever’s behind here he doesn’t want anyone to see.”
“Can we get to the basement from the outside, Sheriff?” asked Ella.
Harris thought for a second, looking toward the windows. He shook his head. “No chance, this is a split-level house. Old-school housing style from the eighteen hundreds. Short of digging up the ground, the only way downstairs is through this here door.”
“Then there’s another way in,” Ella said. “There must be.”
“Well, you know this creep better than me,” Harris said. “Where would a guy like this put a secret door?”
Ella surveyed the room. She thought back to when she was twelve years old, writing her diary entries each and every night by lamplight in her bedroom. She penned all her thoughts in there, however dark and however honest. She didn’t know what she’d do if anyone found it, so she always hid it in a fake compartment in her drawer.
But on top of that fake compartment was another diary. A fake diary with counterfeit thoughts and feelings; the musings of a shy schoolgirl discussing boys and homework and nothing important. She knew that if, somehow, her aunt found this fake diary, her aunt’s curiosity would be satisfied and she’d walk away, leaving Ella’s genuine diary untouched.
This suspect, a somewhat infantile yet functional individual, would undergo the same tactic. “He’d put it somewhere nondescript, and he’d draw attention to it as a way to misdirect people from it.” She hurried across the ground floor, back into the quasi-dining room. “Look for somewhere crammed with taxidermy creatures. Little ones, nothing too in-your-face.” But then she stopped. “Wait.”
“What?” Ripley asked.
Ella eyeballed the back door, equally as deteriorated as other parts of the house. However, blocking the door were several bags of large cement. “There’s no way out of this house other than through the front door. And there’s no upstairs. That’s why he ran back toward it when we closed in on him.” Ella looked at Ripley. It took her a few seconds to catch on.
“So in a panicked state, he would have headed for the only place where he might avoid us,” Ripley said.
“I would have, wouldn’t you?”
“Most definitely. Where was it?”
Ella retraced her steps, standing in front of the cabinet with the bat jars. “Then he appeared over there,” she pointed. She moved to a large wooden cabinet indented into the wall. She pulled it open. It was around six feet tall and four feet wide.
“Damn, I should have known,” Harris said. “Split-level houses like this have their baths and toilets separated. This here is what used to be the toilet.”
But inside looked like a regular cupboard. There were three shelves of monstrous taxidermies, with a two-headed fox guarding the bottom half.
Ripley jumped in. She picked up the fox and threw it out into the dining room. She reached down and pulled up the bottom panel, revealing a rough hole cut into the floor.
“Holy hell,” said Harris. “Would you look at that?”
“This is it. He ran toward here because he thought it was his only chance to escape. But when he realized we’d find him eventually, he tried to run back out the front door.” Ella shone her flashlight down into the darkness. A horde of cries and unrecognizable sounds came from below, as though they’d disturbed a distant alien colony.
“Something’s alive down there,” said Ripley. She inspected the hole. It was amateur in creation; jagged with uneven cuts. Ella shone her flashlight down but couldn’t make out anything solid. The three exchanged glances.
“Who’s going down first?” Ripley asked.
Ella showed no hesitation in climbing through the hole, at least on the surface. She’d caught this suspect and the adrenaline was coursing through her like a heavy drug. There was definitely fear in her heart, b
ut something prevented her from showing it. Inside, she was screaming, but determination overrode every emotion.
There was no ladder or staircase, only a short drop from ceiling to floor. She landed on a concrete surface, the cold, musty air hitting her hard. The cries came louder, almost frenzied, but didn’t get any closer. She reached around the wall looking for a light switch, finally landing on a pull cord.
Her heart pounded as an orb of light appeared in the center of the room. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to bring the basement’s horrors into view.
“Oh my god,” Ella said.
***
Trapped in cages in the far end of the basement were living creatures crying out to be saved. A baby alligator paced up and down its small prison, clawing at the steel bars in a desperate bid to escape. Beside it, two dogs lay down together, limp and frail, possibly waiting for death to free them from their suffering. Sitting along the wall to her right was a long rectangular box. She peered inside, finding a mass grave of dead birds. One or two were still alive, still fluttering. Almost every inch of the room bore remains of some kind; snapped bones, animal hides, scales, feathers, dog heads.
Ripley and Harris descended from above down into the chamber of horrors, sharing the same reaction as Ella.
“Jesus in heaven. I knew he was a wacko but... I never expected this.” Harris’s voice from behind.
Ella turned to basement’s opposite end, seeing the staircase which led back up to the hallway. Dead beasts and decaying carcasses lay at her feet. Tufts of hair, torn limbs, and the skeletal remains of a dog decorated a large operating table which spanned the entire width of the basement wall. It seemed that the dog was next in line for Clyde’s amateur surgery.
“This has to be our guy,” Ella said. “Look at this. This is pure sadism and experimentation. Between kills he must experiment on animals to satisfy his urges.”
Ella was convinced, but Ripley’s face told her a different story. She watched Ripley study the room with that expert eye. Behind her, Harris’s phone rang. He answered it as he gazed at the withered dog remains on Clyde’s worktable. He stared at it in disbelief. “Okay, I’ll tell her,” he said. He hung up.
Before Ripley could chime in with her thoughts, Harris spoke up.
“Clyde is back at the precinct, and there’s good news and bad news,” he said. “The bad news is that he’s not saying a word to my guys.”
“And the good news?” Ripley asked.
“The good news is that he’s willing to talk, but only to Miss Dark.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ella, Ripley, and Sheriff Harris stood outside the door to Interrogation Room 3A. Through the one-way glass, Clyde Harmen looked a lot less intimidating than he did in the shadows. But then again, they all did. Ella thought back to the pictures from 1957. For all of Ed Gein’s grisly exploits, he looked like nothing more than a frail old man once the handcuffs were snapped on.
“Are you sure you want to go in there alone?” asked Ripley.
Ella had profiled this guy down to the last detail. She’d been the one to apprehend him. It was only fitting that she extracted the truth from him too.
“Yes. I can do this,” she said, not taking her eyes off him through the glass. “I know how to get a guy like him talking. I’m convinced he’s our guy. It’s in my gut.”
“Last time he was in here, he was a perv with a capital P,” Harris said. “A young gunslinger like you, he’s going to talk some serious flash to get you riled up. Be ready.”
Ella acknowledged it, took it on board. It was fine, she thought. That was something she was used to.
“Little bit of advice,” Ripley started. “With a creep like this, being tough won’t get you anywhere. He won’t confess no matter aggressively you ask him. You need to get under his skin. Make him uncomfortable. Get down to his level and outsmart him, okay?”
Ella felt the nervousness settle in her stomach. She thought back to how the authorities had gotten Charles Manson and David Berkowitz to talk. In short, they’d told them to cut the bullshit and get to the facts. It was a trick that worked assuming that the killer knew that you knew they were guilty. Given that Ella and Clyde had been in an almost fatal battle less than two hours ago, there was already an I-hate-you-and-you-hate-me relationship in place. She couldn’t play to his ego, like they did with John Gacy and Richard Speck. It wouldn’t work, since she’d already bested him. She had to be the authority.
She entered the interrogation room, again realizing why they called it the ice room. She ignored the discomfort and kept her attention on Clyde.
It was her first face-to-face conversation with a potential serial killer. She’d dreamed of a moment like this for years, in the same way she’d morbidly dreamed of scouring a real-life house of horrors in the flesh. Never in a million years did she imagine she’d do both on the same day, and neither did she imagine that such sights and events would leave a mental scar she might never recover from. When she looked back on this day, she knew that she wouldn’t remember them with fondness. It had been a harrowing experience, and if she knew back then what she knew now, she might have forgone this horror house fantasy in favor of something less traumatic.
“Where do you want to start?” Ella said. She pulled out the chair and sat opposite Clyde, ensuring her posture indicated confidence. Standing up and walking around would give off that an aura of pseudo-dominance, which she knew wouldn’t fly with a personality like Clyde’s. He needed to know she was in charge but not so domineering that he’d begin to oppose her authority.
Clyde rested his shackled hands on the table between them and watched her closely as she took her seat. The fetters locking his feet in place jangled as he quivered his knees in an unconscious display of nervousness. Ella saw the goose bumps pop up along his exposed forearms.
“Who are you, the secretary?” he asked.
Ella let the moment hang in the air. “Yes, I’m the secretary who kicked the shit out of you about an hour ago.”
That’s something Ripley would say, she thought.
Clyde ignored the comment. He coughed what was obviously a fake cough. “Why would a pretty girl like you become a police officer?” he asked. “Seems a waste if you ask me.”
“FBI agent, actually,” she said with a hint of venom. It felt good to put him in his place.
Clyde smiled. “Wow. You must have slept with some very powerful men to get that job.”
Don’t rise to it, Ella thought. If you acknowledge his little digs, he’ll know he can get under your skin by making more of them. “Sure did. So tell me, why did you only want to speak to me?”
“An FBI agent can’t figure that out?”
“Apparently not.”
“Try harder.”
“Come on, Mr. Harmen, we’re not here to play games” said Ella.
“Sounds to me like you don’t know.”
She decided to hit him with some harsh truths. Knock him down a peg and show him that she was the one in charge. She wasn’t going to let this guy get one over on her.
“Mr. Harmen, I found you based on extensive behavioral analysis, psychological profiling, and inductive reasoning. You think I don’t already know everything about you?”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”
“Like?”
“Fine, I’ll tell you. But you have to answer my question. What’s got two thumbs and prefers young bitches over miserable old sheriffs? Clue, it’s not the dead monkey in my basement.”
Ella took a mental step back. She hadn’t expected Clyde to be like this at all. She anticipated a shy, withdrawn man who wasn’t comfortable around women. She expected silence and anxiety from him, not defiance, and certainly not jokes.
Ella shook her head. “A two thumbs joke? Is it 2002 again?”
“Oh, come on. A girl like you should laugh more.”
“Speaking of your basement,” Ella began, “want to tell me what that’s all about?” She watched a
wry smile spread across his face. She could tell that he’d been waiting a long time to tell someone about the horrors inside his basement.
Clyde sat back in his chair and rattled the chains around his wrists. “I run a taxidermy business,” he said. “Can’t do taxidermy without animals, can you?”
“Do they need to be locked up in cages, on the verge of death? Tortured? Starved?” she said, feeling the anger gradually build. She had a low tolerance for animal abusers. They were the weakest of the weak. Some of the most heart-wrenching cases she worked on during her time with the Virginia state police involved animal neglect. She’d tried for many years to brush them from her memory.
“No,” Clyde laughed. “That’s a personal choice.”
Ella felt a sudden rush of sickness. She was rarely confrontational, but if she was anywhere but here she would have leaned across the table and elbowed Clyde in the mouth. “You can laugh all you want, but you’re on the hook for some serious offenses. Animal cruelty, neglect, abandonment, unlicensed hunting, livestock theft. Not to mention gross bodily harm to a special agent. We can also have you for intent to murder, and that alone can be twenty years. That’s just the beginning, too. Mind telling me where you were last night at around eleven p.m.?”
“Why?” asked Clyde.
“Because a local man was murdered, and something tells me I’m looking at the person who did it.”
Clyde’s body tensed up. Something changed. “Me? Murder? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Ella saw a crack begin to form, a chink in his armor. “Mr. Harmen, do you recall the events of this evening? When you attacked me with a saw? Or do you have the memory span of a goldfish?”
“I was fooling around. You came into my home. I’m allowed to defend myself.”
“We informed you beforehand that we were agents. That excuse won’t fly.”
“Whatever. I’m not a murderer.”
“Mr. Harmen, when I see a house filled with dead animals, sideshow gaffs, and cheap Frankenstein rip-offs, it tells me that whoever lives there might be a sociopath. It tells me that whoever lives there suffers some disturbing thoughts. It tells me he’s a sadist, an experimenter who has to take out his frustrations on things weaker than him, things he can control. It suggests to me that animals might not be the only thing he’s torturing. You see where I’m going with this?”
